How to Extract Doubt From Your Sales Copy

A few years ago, some­thing hap­pened that pro­vided incon­tro­vert­ible proof of the impor­tance of an infal­li­ble rule in copy­writ­ing. I knew it all along but never saw it proven to me in such a per­sonal and direct way.

What am I talk­ing about?

No, it’s not the head­line. It’s not being emo­tional. It’s not ben­e­fits. And it’s not split-​​testing, either. In fact, my open­ing para­graph gave you a clue.

Sure, the head­line, the ben­e­fits, and all those things are impor­tant. Very impor­tant. But the one ele­ment I’m refer­ring to, the one ele­ment that can trans­form flimsy, “yeah-​​right” copy into a sales-​​inducing pow­er­house, is…

… Proof.

Other than poor tar­get­ing and shoddy copy, the lack of proof in your copy is what prob­a­bly (and most likely) causes it to fail. But when I talk about “proof,” I’m not just talk­ing about one or two types, but seven. Yes, seven dif­fer­ent types of proof!

Not only are peo­ple more edu­cated, they’re also more cyn­i­cal and skep­ti­cal than ever.

They never believe any­thing — at least, not at first. Today, I believe per­sua­sion has much less to do with sell­ing than it has to do with build­ing believ­abil­ity and trust.

Blame it on the pro­lif­er­a­tion of scams and snake oils. Or blame it on the pro­fu­sion of aggres­sive, hype-​​filled, carnival-​​barking salesletters.

But the real­ity is, every­thing read­ers see is sus­pect right from the get-​​go. It gives new mean­ing to the word “con­ver­sion.” Peo­ple never believe any­thing the moment they read your copy, so you need to “con­vert” them not into buy­ers but into believ­ers.

You need to prove your case — and not just tell it or, worse yet, sell it. You need to pro­vide proof. As much proof as you can muster. Any kind. Every kind.

For instance, crim­i­nal cases win in court because of a pre­pon­der­ance of proof, and not just a lit­tle. Con­versely, they also lose if there’s rea­son­able doubt. That’s all that’s needed, and often it’s not that much — O.J. Simpson’s case being a per­fect example.

Well, it’s the same with sales copy.

If there’s rea­son­able doubt, you’re going to lose the sale. Even if it’s just a lit­tle. Or at best, you will only get a tiny frac­tion of what’s pos­si­ble in terms of sales, if any.

Here’s what hap­pened in my life recently that proves this point.

My wife is a breast can­cer sur­vivor. A while back, she started a per­sonal blog at Breast​Cancer​Vic​tory​.com that jour­nals her coura­geous jour­ney into healing.

She started this blog for per­sonal rea­sons. It’s part ther­apy, part education.

(Aware­ness and pre­ven­tion are incred­i­bly impor­tant to her. She wanted to clear up a lot of the mis­con­cep­tions out there — a com­mon one being that breast can­cer only affects older women. Sylvie was only 36 years old when she was diagnosed.)

Nev­er­the­less, here’s what happened.

Sylvie started post­ing openly about her can­cer and dis­cussed the many vis­its, tests, and scans she had to undergo, from mam­mo­grams and ultra­sounds, to MRIs and biopsies.

She even talked about her pain, grief, and bouts of sad­ness that nat­u­rally fol­lowed the sur­gi­cal removal of her entire left breast, also known as a “mastectomy.”

So to show my sup­port, I emailed my lists to notify them of her new blog. I did it sev­eral times to max­i­mize expo­sure. And the result­ing out­pour­ing of affec­tion, com­pas­sion, and sup­port as peo­ple com­mented on her blog was sim­ply amazing.

Some posts received as many as 10–20 com­ments. Some received as many as 50. Oth­ers got noth­ing at all. But keep in mind, this was a brand-​​new blog, with no search engine expo­sure, no traf­fic, no adver­tis­ing of any kind.

Then, some­thing com­pletely unex­pected happened.

It blew me — and Sylvie — away!

Soon after she started her blog, my wife vis­ited her sur­geon who, after send­ing the excised breast tis­sue to the pathol­ogy lab for a com­plete analy­sis, needed to dis­cuss the report’s find­ings with her — as well as the nec­es­sary treatments.

“You have breast can­cer,” the doc­tor said. We all knew that.

She also under­went six months of chemother­apy and three months of radi­a­tion ther­apy to pre­vent the can­cer from spread­ing. Again, we all expected that, too.

But here’s what hap­pened and what we didn’t expect.

Sylvie posted the results of the com­plete diag­no­sis to her blog. With a copy of the report in hand, she posted some of the med­ical terms dis­cussed in the report, and what they meant — what they meant in gen­eral, as well as to her, personally.

She included med­ical terms like “Intra­duc­tal Car­ci­noma in Situ,” “Mul­ti­cen­tric Cen­tral Car­ci­noma,” “Lymphatic/​Vascular Inva­sion,” “Inva­sive Tumor Necro­sis,” “Mod­i­fied Scarff Bloom Richard­son Grade,” and more. She explained what each of them meant.

But to show how big this can­cer­ous lump had grown, rather than writ­ing the dimen­sions she cre­ated an actual-​​sized graphic replica, based on the dimen­sions described in the report, visu­ally demon­strat­ing how big the tumor was.

Now, let me back­track a little.

In that post, she pro­vided not one but three types of proof.

First, she pro­vided fac­tual proof. That is, she included actual med­ical terms, data, and num­bers taken straight out of the pathol­ogy report.

Then, she pro­vided evi­den­tial proof. That is, she included lab­o­ra­tory test results prov­ing not only that she did have can­cer, but also how big and advanced it was, and the fact that it has metas­ta­sized to her lymphnodes.

Finally, she pro­vided per­cep­tual proof. You see, facts and data are pow­er­ful proof ele­ments. But with every one, she trans­lated what those terms meant. For exam­ple, cre­at­ing a graphic that demon­strated the actual size of the tumor was a part of it.

And more impor­tantly, she related what these fig­ures and terms meant to her — how she per­ceived and felt about them, even at the moment they were being disclosed.

Because of the fact that these find­ings used tech­ni­cal jar­gon, they are eas­ily left to inter­pre­ta­tion. Plus, they can make the per­son feel dis­tant and removed from them.

But by mak­ing them more real and per­sonal, Sylvie trans­lated what these terms meant to her. This, in turn, pro­vided proof and increased the per­ceived qual­ity of that proof.

This proof made it more, for a lack of a bet­ter word, cred­i­ble. It made the ter­mi­nol­ogy eas­ier to under­stand and inter­nal­ize. And it made her story more con­crete and real.

OK, back to my point.

After she posted this one post, I emailed my list one more time. Same thing as before: the same lists with the exact same num­ber of peo­ple emailed on the pre­vi­ous occa­sions. But what hap­pened next was absolutely incredible…

… That one post alone received over 150 com­ments in 48 hours!

Even now, two years later after that fate­ful day, com­ments are still pour­ing in every week — close to 200 at the time of this writ­ing. See the blog post for yourself.

The bot­tom line is, once my wife pro­vided proof the response rate shot up dra­mat­i­cally. It com­pelled peo­ple to respond. This doesn’t mean they didn’t believe her in her pre­vi­ous posts. But it did reduce if not erad­i­cate any rea­son­able doubt.

And for those who already believed her, it made them believe more.

This entire event gave me an idea. I thought about all the ele­ments of proof that can add more cred­i­bil­ity and believ­abil­ity to your copy. So I came up with a formula.

With a lit­tle help from Sylvie, I came up with the term “FORCEPS.”

Think of a pair of for­ceps, which is com­monly used by sur­geons for extract­ing. In this case, think of it as a way to “sur­gi­cally extract” as much doubt as pos­si­ble from your copy! FORCEPS is an acronym that stands for:

• fac­tual
• opti­cal
• rever­sal
• cre­den­tial
• evi­den­tial
• per­cep­tual
• And social

Let’s take a look at what each one means.

1. Fac­tual Proof

In my wife’s exam­ple above, you were just given some exam­ples of fac­tual proof, such as med­ical terms culled from the pathol­ogy report. Sta­tis­tics, data, fac­toids, num­bers, test results, dimen­sions, and so on all fall in the fac­tual proof category.

Facts of any kind about either the prob­lem (i.e., any­thing that makes the prob­lem more real and urgent in the mind of the reader) or the solu­tion are pow­er­ful proof elements.

2. Opti­cal Proof

In a court case, lawyers will argue that the best and strongest evi­dence is an eye­wit­ness account. Sim­i­larly, opti­cal proof (or visual proof) is one of the most powerful.

As the adage goes, “See­ing is believ­ing.” Any­thing that can visu­ally rep­re­sent the prod­uct, the busi­ness, the per­son, the qual­ity, the claims, or more impor­tantly, the ben­e­fits of the prod­uct or ser­vice, gives your copy a strong advantage.

For exam­ple, if you sell a mon­ey­mak­ing info­prod­uct, these proof ele­ments include scans of checks and bank deposits, screen­shots of web­site traf­fic logs, pic­tures of the author lean­ing against his brand-​​new 2007 Mercedes-​​Benz S-​​Class S550, etc.

You get the pic­ture. Literally.

eBay reported that auc­tions with pic­tures have 400% more bids than ones with­out pic­tures. That’s why adding a pic­ture of your prod­uct in your copy works so well. Includ­ing a graphic cover of your dig­i­tal prod­uct, even if it’s not in phys­i­cal form.

If you sell a phys­i­cal prod­uct, take a pic­ture of it. Bet­ter yet, show it in action. (That’s why videos are bet­ter.) Or take a pic­ture of the prod­uct as you would, for exam­ple, with an online auc­tion. Use dif­fer­ent angles and lights, even with its orig­i­nal wrapping.

But noth­ing beats before-​​and-​​after pic­tures. Even video, if pos­si­ble. For the more vivid the proof is and the more senses they engage, the more believ­able the proof will be.

When I was writ­ing copy for cos­metic sur­geons in my early career, the most effec­tive form of proof was show­ing before-​​and-​​after pic­tures of patients. You also see this in weight­loss pro­grams, body­build­ing equip­ment, diet pro­grams, etc.

That’s why adding before-​​and-​​after pic­tures show not only the results but also the extent and mea­sur­a­bil­ity of those results through the ele­ment of contrast.

How­ever, before-​​and-​​after pic­tures are not restricted to the cos­metic industry.

One of my for­mer clients sells spe­cial light­ing fix­tures. These lights were not your usual light­bulbs. They were using a spe­cial type of halo­gen that was twice as intense as a nor­mal, high-​​wattage incan­des­cent light­bulb, but with only a third of the power.

What did he do? He took a pic­ture of a someone’s liv­ing room with nor­mal light­ing in it, and then took a pic­ture of the room with his spe­cial lights. Both unre­touched pic­tures were placed, side by side, on his sales copy.

The con­trast was obvi­ous. The proof, astound­ing. The sales, significant.

3. Reverse Proof

Speak­ing of com­par­isons, com­par­isons with other types of prod­ucts or ser­vices is another pow­er­ful proof ele­ment. You often see this in com­pet­i­tive analy­ses, when your prod­uct is com­pared to other prod­ucts in its class or category.

(You’ve prob­a­bly seen this with lists of fea­tures and ben­e­fits of var­i­ous prod­ucts, often in a tab­u­lar for­mat, with check­marks, where you can instantly see that the prod­uct in ques­tion had more fea­tures and ben­e­fits than its competitors.)

But don’t limit your­self to direct com­peti­tors. This can apply to indi­rect com­peti­tors, too. For exam­ple, an airline’s direct com­peti­tor is another air­line. But an indi­rect com­peti­tor can be the train, auto­mo­bile rental, bus, ship, etc.

But I pre­fer to call it “reverse proof” because the com­par­i­son doesn’t have to from prod­uct to prod­uct. It can also be from pur­chase to non-​​purchase. Any­thing that shows what can hap­pen if they don’t buy the prod­uct is reverse proof.

In other words, if you can pro­vide proof of any poten­tial down­side if the prospect buys a competitor’s prod­uct or, more impor­tantly, fails to buy at all, is just as pow­er­ful. Because in real­ity, their non-​​purchase is an indi­rect com­peti­tor as well.

Some peo­ple call this com­par­ing apples to oranges.

You com­pare the price of your offer, not against the price of a competitor’s prod­uct (i.e., apples to apples), but against the ulti­mate cost of not buy­ing yours.

For exam­ple, let’s say you know some­one who spent over $20,000 adver­tis­ing a poorly writ­ten ad that had lit­tle to no response. If you sell a copy­writ­ing course for, say, $1,000, then you com­pare the price of your course to the cost of not know­ing how to write copy.

In this case, you com­pare a small $1,000 invest­ment to a poten­tial $20,000 mistake.

4. Cre­den­tial­iz­ing Proof

Cre­den­tial­iz­ing proof is any­thing that helps to cre­den­tial­ize (i.e., demon­strate, high­light, or bring atten­tion to the cre­den­tials of) the prod­uct, busi­ness, or per­son behind it.

What kind of edu­ca­tion or exper­tise does the author have? How many years has the busi­ness been around for? How many clients did they serve? What kind of degrees, accred­i­ta­tion, cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, or awards have they won?

If the prod­uct or author in ques­tion has appeared in the media, don’t be shy in adding these in your copy, includ­ing: news­pa­per and mag­a­zine arti­cles, media reports on the prod­uct or busi­ness, appear­ance in trade jour­nals, write­ups in con­sumer reports, etc.

If you can name­drop some­one who’s a rec­og­nized author­ity in their field or even a celebrity, and do it in an eth­i­cal and log­i­cal way, do so. Or let them do the talk­ing for you.

In court cases, one of the most com­monly sub­poe­naed wit­nesses are “expert wit­nesses.” Sim­i­larly, reviews from indus­try author­i­ties, even endorse­ments from celebri­ties, though biased, also give your copy per­ceived objectivity.

If you were talked about on TV or radio shows, or in pub­li­ca­tions, drop those names, too. Some copy­writ­ers even add graph­ics or logos of those media in which they appeared.

For exam­ple, some of my clients have added scanned mag­a­zine cov­ers to their copy — mag­a­zines in which arti­cles by or about them appeared. Some even add the words “As Seen In…” This pro­vides both cre­den­tial­iz­ing and opti­cal proof.

But noth­ing beats author­i­ta­tive endorse­ments, both direct and even indi­rect ones.

Osten­si­bly, a direct one is one in which an author­ity directly endorses the prod­uct. But an indi­rect one is one in which there is per­ceived author­ity, or that the author­ity is implied, such as “9 out of 10 den­tists agree.”

Another exam­ple of an indi­rect author­i­ta­tive endorse­ment was once used by mas­ter copy­writer Gary Ben­civenga, who dis­cussed a head­line that said, “When doc­tors have a headache, here’s what they do.” You can read that arti­cle here.

5. Evi­den­tial Proof

Evi­den­tial proof is evi­dence or an argu­ment that com­pels the mind to accept an asser­tion as true. In fact, in the dic­tio­nary one of the many def­i­n­i­tions of “proof” states:

“1. The val­i­da­tion of a propo­si­tion by appli­ca­tion of induc­tion or deduc­tion to derived con­clu­sions; a state­ment or argu­ment used in such a val­i­da­tion. 2. Con­vinc­ing or per­sua­sive demon­stra­tion; deter­mi­na­tion of the qual­ity of some­thing by test­ing or trial.”

There­fore, any­thing that can prove the valid­ity of a claim, result, or promise, and any­thing that can jus­tify, backup, or sup­port a claim, in any way, is evi­den­tial proof.

For exam­ple, some of them include prod­uct demon­stra­tions, sam­ples, inde­pen­dent stud­ies, clin­i­cal tri­als, con­trolled tests, etc. Even events and chal­lenges work well, which is a blend of cre­den­tial­iz­ing proof and evi­den­tial proof.

As the author of “Noth­ing Down,” a book on how to buy prop­erty with no upfront money or col­lat­eral, Robert Allen was chal­lenged by the media to prove his claim.

The chal­lenge was to drop him in the mid­dle of nowhere with only $100 for food and water, and within 24 hours he had to buy a prop­erty with noth­ing down.

Not only did he buy one but also ended up buy­ing several.

He took the chal­lenge to put his claims to the test and won. But more impor­tantly, he got the media involved, which pro­vided a lot of pub­lic­ity. Those are the kinds of results you cer­tainly want to dis­cuss if not show­case in your sale copy.

This is sim­i­lar to “con­trolled tests.” I’m not talk­ing about the mar­ket­ing kind. I mean tests that actu­ally val­i­date the process, the prod­uct, the results, the claims, etc.

You can do hard tests or soft tests.

Hard tests are where you actu­ally put your prod­uct to the test to mea­sure its qual­ity or val­i­date its claims. Soft tests are tests that do not directly val­i­date the prod­uct, but used to drive home a cer­tain point or prove an impor­tant benefit.

In the infomer­cial for a syn­thetic car oil called “DuraLube,” they had cars put up on cin­der blocks, drained them com­pletely of oil, and had the motor run until it seized. To fix the engine, one would have to invest in costly mechan­i­cal work.

Then they added one small bot­tle of DuraLube, drained it once more, and started the car, which was run­ning on DuraLube’s residue only. Not only did the car start with­out any prob­lems, but an elapsed timer showed the motor ran for hours with­out fail.

While DuraLube is an exam­ple of a hard test, a soft one is like the com­mer­cial for Oreck vac­uum clean­ers. The goal was to prove that their vac­uum, which was incred­i­bly light­weight, could have unbe­liev­able “hur­ri­cane force” suc­tion for such a light machine.

So they had the vac­uum lit­er­ally suck up a bowl­ing ball. That’s some­what of a hard test.

The soft test was when they showed how the vac­uum, placed on one end of a large scale against the same bowl­ing ball on the other, weighed less the ball itself. You saw the bowl­ing ball plum­met while the vac­uum raised up in the air like a feather.

6. Per­cep­tual Proof

Also called “per­sua­sive proof,” per­cep­tual proof helps to increase the per­ceived qual­ity of the evi­dence, and strength­ens how some­one appre­ci­ates that evidence.

We all know that facts and fig­ures can mean dif­fer­ent things. But how did one arrive at these con­clu­sions? Against what can they be mea­sured to under­stand their impor­tance? And what do they mean at an inti­mate level, par­tic­u­larly to the reader?

That’s where sto­ries, analo­gies, anec­dotes, exam­ples, metaphors, and real-​​life accounts help to not only expand on and solid­ify the proof given, but also relate them to the reader and increase their level of appreciation.

Just like my wife who, in her blog post, related what those med­ical terms meant to her.

She didn’t just list all the med­ical details and what they meant. She also told them in the form of a story, and included a few metaphors to help us under­stand and appre­ci­ate what was hap­pen­ing to her. It made the proof more real and concrete.

7. Social Proof

Lastly but not the least, social proof is proof by mod­el­ing. In other words, we tend to give more cre­dence to an idea or behav­ior when we see the masses approv­ing or doing it.

Also known as “infor­ma­tional social influ­ence,” social proof occurs in social sit­u­a­tions when peo­ple make the assump­tion that oth­ers, espe­cially by their num­bers, pos­sess more knowl­edge and there­fore deem their behav­ior as appropriate.

They tend to assume an idea is valid not by its objec­tive evi­dence but by its pop­u­lar­ity, fol­low­ing, or accep­tance by oth­ers. The more peo­ple talk about it, endorse it, or buy it, the assump­tion is the more valid and rel­e­vant it must be.

For exam­ple, forms of social proof include tes­ti­mo­ni­als, case stud­ies, sales num­bers, clien­tele size, num­ber of endorse­ments, fan base size, and so forth.

The more real you make them, the more believ­able they are (such as tes­ti­mo­ni­als with audio, video, pic­tures, sig­na­tures, screen­shots, graphs, etc). Even blogs, forums, and social media are widely rec­og­nized and used as effec­tive forms of social proof.

So, there you have it.

These are just some ideas. The bot­tom line is, the more proof you pro­vide, and the more you backup your claims with proof of any kind, whether they are hard or soft, or objec­tive or sub­jec­tive, the more believ­able — and prof­itable — your copy will be.

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

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